Nintendo announces the Wii Vitality Sensor, a device that attaches to the tip of the player's finger that measures their vital signs and helps them relax.

It sounds like one of those biorhythm reading machines you find in dirty bowling alley arcades, though as a Nintendo Wii product it is of course pristine and white. The device was presented by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata at the company's 2009 E3 press conference, following a brief speech about the difficulty of video games. Without actually tying things together, he explained that the new device lets you see the information relating to the "inner world" of your body in order to achieve greater relaxation. The device attaches to the bottom of the Wii remote and then clips onto your finger.

It sounds like it could be used to measure stress levels via pulse rates, with the data then used to adjust game difficulty. That, or Nintendo just wants to see if we will pay them money to let us pinch our fingers.

Nintendo announces the Wii Vitality Sensor, a device that attaches to the tip of the player's finger that measures their vital signs and helps them relax.

It sounds like one of those biorhythm reading machines you find in dirty bowling alley arcades, though as a Nintendo Wii product it is of course pristine and white. The device was presented by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata at the company's 2009 E3 press conference, following a brief speech about the difficulty of video games. Without actually tying things together, he explained that the new device lets you see the information relating to the "inner world" of your body in order to achieve greater relaxation. The device attaches to the bottom of the Wii remote and then clips onto your finger.

It sounds like it could be used to measure stress levels via pulse rates, with the data then used to adjust game difficulty. That, or Nintendo just wants to see if we will pay them money to let us pinch our fingers.

i watched the presentation on G4 today and i think it is going to be a sort of biofeedback thing where people will be able to see a visualization of their pulse/stress level and then learn to focus on adjusting it, being able to visually see how their body is reacting to their attempts to relax or stay calm. the concept has been around quite a while and there is definitely something to it, as a migraine sufferer i became aware of biofeedback as a method to deal with them back when i was a teenager in the early 80's. with much simpler visual queues than the Wii will offer i am sure, the machines allowed people to see a visual representation of their physical stress level which helped them learn to focus on reducing it through meditation techniques.

now, who knows just what the quality of the info that little finger thing will gather, but the concept is sound and i could see it being integrated into a video-game system experience, just not the kind most people think of. the guy for Nintendo was saying that they were trying to expand peoples' image of what a video game was, that traditionally video games have been a source of adrenaline, excitment, but that he believed that games could also be used for people to experience things in the reverse direction, where they would "play" a game that would make them more relaxed, more at peace. while the new stuff might still need more polish or development i give Nintendo credit for trying to push the boundaries of what a video game console can do, and how it plays a part in daily life, while Sony sits there and just keeps churning out the same mentality of game development that has been around since the early 90's. sure, the graphics are pretty, but all they do is produced beefed up versions of the same concepts and their little black box is still nothing more than the Playstation 2 was when it came out, a video game console that plays movies. no new ideas. no new concepts. just more polish and steroids for the same old thing. and at least X-Box has marketplace and the tie-in with Netflix, they have made an attempt to do more with their system than just put out a game box.

Last edited by Peven on Tue Jun 02, 2009 7:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Peven, the ps3 lets you buy a sata hard drive from whatever store you like & fit it straight in.That's a step in the right direction for consoles.You can also hook just about any usb device up to it & have it work, unlike the xbox.

It's a step closer to where we should (ideally) be right now in terms of a set standard for connectivity & peripherals, after the huge set back during the mid 90's (Atari, Amiga, C=64, Sega's Master System & Mega Drive/Genesis all used the same controller interface, possibly the Spectrum & Armstrad CPC too, but my memory is a little fuzzy as i haven't played either of them for a very long time).

The games may just be high-res versions of ps2 games, but the system it's self is quite remarkable.

it is only remarkable to you tech geeks who look at spec sheets and cream yourselves. problem is you guys represent a very small % of the market and those specs don't necessarily translate into a better gaming experience, especially for those who are not typical gamers. the proof is in the pudding, both the Wii and the X-Box provide more "regular" people a more enjoyable overall experience at a price that is more attainable than the PS3. if you like specs, numbers, look at the sales of the consoles and games and it is clear that PS3 has not been a system that is popular among any group aside from hardcore gamers. why? because it is still just a game system. and if you are just a gamer, that is ok. but the people who weren't interested in the Playstation or Playstation 2 aren't interested in the Playstation 3 either because it still doesn't offer them anything new, anything outside the type of game experience that the PS2 offered, it just does it with beefed up engines with better graphics. meanwhile, there are all sorts of people who have bought a Wii or an X-Box who weren't among the market during the last generation of video game consoles. why? because both Wii and X-Box offer those people something different than just a newer shinier video game box. they have expanded the market by expanding the experience provided by their machines. PS3 has done almost nothing to expand the market, they weren't trying to, they just planned to sell PS 3's to all those who had bought the PS2's, took it for granted the way it seems, and that is why they have had their ass handed to them by both Nintendo and Microsoft.

King Of Nowhere wrote:Peven, the ps3 lets you buy a sata hard drive from whatever store you like & fit it straight in.That's a step in the right direction for consoles.You can also hook just about any usb device up to it & have it work, unlike the xbox.

It's a step closer to where we should (ideally) be right now in terms of a set standard for connectivity & peripherals, after the huge set back during the mid 90's (Atari, Amiga, C=64, Sega's Master System & Mega Drive/Genesis all used the same controller interface, possibly the Spectrum & Armstrad CPC too, but my memory is a little fuzzy as i haven't played either of them for a very long time).

The games may just be high-res versions of ps2 games, but the system it's self is quite remarkable.

It's strange that the only section of consumer electronics to not become standardised in some way is games consoles. It's always been different formats, media, interfaces, peripherals etc etc

Panasonic, LG and Sanyo sort've tried it with the 3DO in the mid-90s, but they didn't really choose the best time what with the 1500 other consoles around at the time (and Sony, Philips and a few others tried it in the 80s with the MSX home computer but that failed to keep costs down)

Peven wrote:it is only remarkable to you tech geeks who look at spec sheets and cream yourselves

Actually, it's quite the opposite.

A standard is just that, a standard. A standard isn't there to impress anyone, it's there so we don't have to worry about it, so we can spend that time playing games.Not only does it save confusion for the majority of people who buy consoles and hardware, but it also keeps prices down.A 120gig sata hard drive costs £35.22. Microsoft's xbox360 120gig hard drive costs £93.79.

Fried Gold wrote:It's strange that the only section of consumer electronics to not become standardised in some way is games consoles. It's always been different formats, media, interfaces, peripherals etc etc

Panasonic, LG and Sanyo sort've tried it with the 3DO in the mid-90s, but they didn't really choose the best time what with the 1500 other consoles around at the time (and Sony, Philips and a few others tried it in the 80s with the MSX home computer but that failed to keep costs down)

Again, in the 80's & early 90's there was a sort of standard.Aside from the controller thing, you had the cassette tapes.You could buy say, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolk Folk, play it on your c=64, then let a friend borrow it & play it on his Armstrad or Spectrum.

Imagine of you went to a game store nowadays & bought a Bluray disk that had both the ps3 version of the game & the xbox360 version on it, it seems really fucking unlikely though.

you were in your diapers in the 80's KON so i am not sure what experience you are drawing from to make those statements, but i was actually a teenager at the time with a Commodore 64 and i remember having to buy the C64 version of a game to play it and it didn't work on an Atari or Intellivision or NES or any other game system. this standardization you seem to think existed in the 80's didn't

Peven wrote:you were in your diapers in the 80's KON so i am not sure what experience you are drawing from to make those statements, but i was actually a teenager at the time with a Commodore 64 and i remember having to buy the C64 version of a game to play it and it didn't work on an Atari or Intellivision or NES or any other game system. this standardization you seem to think existed in the 80's didn't

did you actually read my post? did i mention the Nes, Atari or intellivision at all there? No.The Nes, Atari & Intellivision used cartridges, not cassettes.I know the c=64 used carts too, they even released a cut down, keyboard-less system that only ran carts, but there were far fewer carts than cassettes.

I can't talk about diskettes cause we weren't posh enough for the drive, so it was time to put the kettle on after you pressed play on tape, 600 seconds later CJ's Elephant antics would load it's intro where it jumps out of the plane, then you had to flip the bloody tape over. Good music though.

Peven wrote:you were in your diapers in the 80's KON so i am not sure what experience you are drawing from to make those statements, but i was actually a teenager at the time with a Commodore 64 and i remember having to buy the C64 version of a game to play it and it didn't work on an Atari or Intellivision or NES or any other game system. this standardization you seem to think existed in the 80's didn't

did you actually read my post? did i mention the Nes, Atari or intellivision at all there? No.The Nes, Atari & Intellivision used cartridges, not cassettes.I know the c=64 used carts too, they even released a cut down, keyboard-less system that only ran carts, but there were far fewer carts than cassettes.

I can't talk about diskettes cause we weren't posh enough for the drive, so it was time to put the kettle on after you pressed play on tape, 600 seconds later CJ's Elephant antics would load it's intro where it jumps out of the plane, then you had to flip the bloody tape over. Good music though.

yeah, i read your post, and you were comparing apples to oranges. i was just pointing that out

King Of Nowhere wrote:Aside from the controller thing, you had the cassette tapes.You could buy say, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolk Folk, play it on your c=64, then let a friend borrow it & play it on his Armstrad or Spectrum.

You may be right but however I don't recall the tapes playing on different systems. I remember my local store (and Special Reserve) selling different tapes for Commodore/Amstrad/Spectrum/MSX etc etc

But it's been a long time since I went to buy cassettes for The Living Daylights or Brian Jacks Superstar Challenge.

King Of Nowhere wrote:Aside from the controller thing, you had the cassette tapes.You could buy say, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolk Folk, play it on your c=64, then let a friend borrow it & play it on his Armstrad or Spectrum.

You may be right but however I don't recall the tapes playing on different systems. I remember my local store (and Special Reserve) selling different tapes for Commodore/Amstrad/Spectrum/MSX etc etc

But it's been a long time since I went to buy cassettes for The Living Daylights or Brian Jacks Superstar Challenge.

It may just have been a few games. Maybe just codemasters stuff, as i remember quite a few of the Dizzy games, Slightly Magic & Seymore all had the little diagonal red stripe on the casette cover saying that they worked on each machine.

I want to say i remember Bubble Bobble having the red strip too, but i could be wrong.There is the possibility that it was just the budget games that were multi-platform, to save the publishers from making 3 or 4 different runs of carts.

I'm finding it increasingly annoying that quite a lot of third-party games don't seem to be getting to the Wii (or end up being weak ports) and that pretty much every third-party game that does get there is by EA.

King Of Nowhere wrote:Aside from the controller thing, you had the cassette tapes.You could buy say, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolk Folk, play it on your c=64, then let a friend borrow it & play it on his Armstrad or Spectrum.

You may be right but however I don't recall the tapes playing on different systems. I remember my local store (and Special Reserve) selling different tapes for Commodore/Amstrad/Spectrum/MSX etc etc

But it's been a long time since I went to buy cassettes for The Living Daylights or Brian Jacks Superstar Challenge.

It may just have been a few games. Maybe just codemasters stuff, as i remember quite a few of the Dizzy games, Slightly Magic & Seymore all had the little diagonal red stripe on the casette cover saying that they worked on each machine.

I want to say i remember Bubble Bobble having the red strip too, but i could be wrong.There is the possibility that it was just the budget games that were multi-platform, to save the publishers from making 3 or 4 different runs of carts.

Fried Gold wrote:I'm finding it increasingly annoying that quite a lot of third-party games don't seem to be getting to the Wii (or end up being weak ports) and that pretty much every third-party game that does get there is by EA.

It's becoming like the Gamecube all over again.

Yeah, Wii support has fallen quite a bit, probably becuase it's not getting the spotlight it used you. But at least we now have Punch out on the Wii.

But, again, it shouldn't have taken this long to be released. Anyone who wanted to play the game probably bought an Xbox instead.

You do know that it's a prequel to the original Dead Space, right?

Yep. Hopefully it's still good.

Fried Gold wrote:

There might, MIGHT be hope for quality games coming out.

My concern is that, getting on for three years since the Wii's release, it should be in full stride in terms of third party support and games quality.

Agreed.And now that MS & Sony both have motion control coming out, I don't see why any major developer would go to the Wii with a new idea rather than try and develop it for the other two.Sigh.[/quote]And what were Nintendo's big announcements recently... the motionplus add-on and some sequel games to go with (Wii Sports 2, ANOTHER farkin golf game and a second Red Steel game)

Nintendo consoles have never really had huge third party support.In the past it probably had a lot to do with Nintendo's policies on selling carts to the developers & whatnot.Now it has to do with developers making cheap motion sensor games rather than big budget masterpieces.

That being said, the list of Wii games covered at E3 reads something like this:

Astro Boy

Ju-On: The Grudge

Red Steel 2

The Beatles: Rock Band

The Legend of Zelda

Resident Evil Archives

a boy and his blob

LEGO Rock Band

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

DanceDanceRevolution

Mario and Sonic (Winter Olympics)

Sin and Punishment 2

Dead Space Extraction

Metroid: Other M

Super Mario Galaxy 2

DJ Hero

Monado: Beginning of the World

Tales of Monkey Island

Endless Ocean 2

Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Tatsunoko vs Capcom

Fragile: Farewell Ruins of the Moon

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

TMNT: Smash-Up

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles

No More Heroes 2

Tony Hawk Ride

Gladiator A.D.

Overlord Dark Legend

Twisted World

The Grinder

Pop'n Music

Wii Fit Plus

Wii Sports Resort

Your Shape

Not all of those are first party games or third party motion control shovelware.

As much as absolutely HATE how so many Gamecube games are being/have been ported over to the Wii, I will be picking up the re-re-releases of the Resident Evil Archive games since I didn't have a Gamecube.

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As much as absolutely HATE how so many Gamecube games are being/have been ported over to the Wii, I will be picking up the re-re-releases of the Resident Evil Archive games since I didn't have a Gamecube.

Hmm, it sounds like it's better (cheaper) on the ps2. Includes Fate of Atlantis though, so it's not all bad.Actually, i'm not sure how well point & click games would work on the wii.Hmm...

no shit, my parents (who are in their 50s) have a PS2...now mainly that's because they do foster care and like to have a game system as a reward or when wether is bad

now they are thinking of getting a WII (mom's a physical therepist and likes the Wii Fit applications) but yeah

that said I love my PS2 and have no plans of replacing it, though I do want a wii--simply for smash brothers and the more options it offers for Rock Band/Guitar Hero

sadly the PS2 version of rock band doesn't offer the create yor own char. and I don't care ofr it's tour option

and I think all I'd play on an X-Box is like Madden or NCAA football, maybe Call of Duty because I have a friend in KY that is obssesed with that game and it'd be a way for me to play against him...or Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, I can never find anyone to play with online anymore on the original

I've had a PS2 since 2001.We got a Wii last Christmas so that my wife and I would both use it for the activity/Wii Fit type stuff. Our doctor actually recommended it.So I took my PS2 back to my Mom's house (aka Free Storage Unit) because we have no room in our tiny little house.

Then my wife got pregnant and now she hasn't touched it in months.My foot's broken and I think Mario Kart is the only game I have that I can play sitting down.

Madden for Wii looks ALF beyond ALF and they stopped making PC versions, so I'm up shit creek there.They don't even make NCAA for Wii anymore... not that it didn't look ALF in its own right.

It truly is amazing how the PS2 keeps selling like it does.I may have to bring mine back for some football this fall.

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